


my babe would never fret none (about what my hands and my body done)

by singsongsung



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-27
Updated: 2014-12-27
Packaged: 2018-03-03 21:46:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2889047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singsongsung/pseuds/singsongsung
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Raven feels like she's about to fall apart, but she doesn't. It is only when Bellamy scoops her up off the ground, carrying her like a child, that she realizes he's been holding her together the whole time.</p><p>Or, Raven in the aftermath.</p>
            </blockquote>





	my babe would never fret none (about what my hands and my body done)

**Author's Note:**

> Post-"Spacewalker." 
> 
> Title from Hozier's "Work Song."

 

For a long time, Raven's senses are dulled. Certainly, things are happening - the occasional Grounder calling for war, Abby calling out to her daughter, various murmurs of shock. But none of that exists for Raven. For the longest time, she can only hear the wretched sounds of her own animalistic screams, somewhere in the distance, like they're coming from someone, somewhere, else.

When feeling comes back, it comes back in brutal, blistering bursts: the agony of the screams tearing out of her throat, the sensation of her heart being yanked from her chest, the vision of FInn's body slumping forward playing on repeat behind her closed eyelids.

Raven feels like she's about to fall apart, but she doesn't. It is only when Bellamy scoops her up off the ground, carrying her like a child, that she realizes he's been holding her together the whole time.

 

 

 

 

 

She wakes up in Bellamy's tent. Her eyes are sore and her head is aching; her mouth is very dry. Bellamy is asleep next to her, snoring softly. The sound of his breathing makes her cry - Finn will never breathe again.

Bellamy wakes to the sound of her sobbing. He reaches out and yanks her against him, almost roughly, holding onto her with that same strength from last night. She doesn't have enough pride left to care that she's sobbing against his chest, curling up against him in desperate need. He runs his fingers through her tangled hair and down the ridges of her spine.

"He was all I had," Raven gasps, strangled voice through gritted teeth.

"I know," Bellamy says, heart in his voice like he really does. "Raven, I know."

 

 

 

 

 

"I'm here," Bellamy says to her over and over again. He says it when she starts awake in the middle of the night, when she sits silently in his sweatshirt, engulfed by her grief, when she starts to cry silently in spite of herself.

"I'm here," he tells her, a quiet presence at the edges of her vision, always within reach of her fingertips.

It becomes his refrain, two quick words in a steady voice, but she knows it isn't always true. Raven sleeps for most of the day, retreats to a world that doesn't hurt quite so much, and she suspects - or maybe she knows - that when he isn't with her, he's with Clarke.

It isn't something they talk about. Raven's grief is far too fresh and terrible. It cannot yet be contained. It is bigger than the sky.

 

 

 

 

 

Abby comes into the tent on the third day after (after Finn is dead, Finn is dead, Finn is dead and Raven's world is  _before_ and  _after_  and no other measure of time is possible). She sits on the ground next to Raven and says, "Bellamy tells me you haven't been eating."

Raven stares at her, unblinking.

"I know you're struggling," Abby says, "but you can't starve yourself. You should - "

"You  _hit_  me," Raven interrupts, a charged accusation in a small voice she hates. Abby looks stunned and then regretful, and just like that Raven's crying again, the big sobs that are becoming familiar, her nose all snotty and her vision totally blurred.

She doesn't stop until Bellamy's hand is cradling her head and his lips are gentle against her ear. "I'm here," he says, and Raven figures out how to breathe again.

 

 

 

 

 

Somewhere outside of the tent, life goes on. Raven assumes they're in peace talks with the Grounders, since no one has barged in and tried to kill her, though sometimes she wishes for death, feels that it's what she deserves.

Raven does not give a fuck about peace. She would've drawn her knife in a slow, satisfying line across Lexa's throat. She wouldn't have cared if the Grounders tore her limb from limb. She would have done anything to save Finn, absolutely anything.

She is so angry at Clarke, for not letting her sacrifice Murphy, for sticking Raven's knife in Finn's heart, but she is also angry at herself. There are so many scenarios in which Finn would still be alive: if she'd taken the fall for her own spacewalk, if she'd been able to go out on the search for Clarke and talk him out of his craziness, if her leg was still functioning and she could've run to him, if she could have gotten there fast enough to fling her body in front of his.

There is a part of Raven that's not sure how to live if Finn is dead, and no one understands - certainly not Clarke, who'd started arguing with her mother minutes after their reunion, and not even Bellamy, who has Octavia back. No one understands and Raven feels so very alone.

(Moments later Bellamy comes back into the tent and the second he sees the look on her face he says, "I'm here."

 _So am I_ , Raven thinks, though she wishes she weren't.)

 

 

 

 

 

Her sense of time is extremely muddled, but she's pretty sure she has sex with Bellamy five nights after Finn's death. She initiates it and she is rough with him, so he is rough with her, until he stops abruptly.

"Raven," he says against her neck, "Maybe we shouldn't -

"You're not that guy," she says, with a ferocity in her voice that startles them both. "You're not the guy to talk me down."

His eyes are dark and full of things she doesn't want to see. "Maybe you need that guy."

She squeezes her own eyes shut. "That guy is dead."

Bellamy cups her cheek in his hand, the calluses on his fingers brushing against her skin. "I'm here," he tells her, like that means something, like it means anything at all, and Raven wants to scream.

"Fuck you," she says, her hands tight on his shoulders, nails drawing blood from his skin. "Fuck me."

He does. When it's over Raven feels weak. She puts her hands over her face as she cries.

 

 

 

 

 

Jaha comes to see her. Bellamy looks at him for a moment with an unreadable frown on his face, and then sweeps out dramatically, the tent's flaps rustling in the wind.

"Hello, Raven," Jaha says. "May I call you Raven?"

"Yes," she says. She doesn't know what else he would call her.

Jaha sits down next to Bellamy's sleeping bag. He looks so much older now. "I brought you some food."

She turns her face away. "I'm not hungry."

"Killing yourself won't bring him back." Raven's eyes snap back to his face and he meets her gaze steadily. "Believe me."

"Why?" Raven asks. "Why should I believe you?" No one has been keeping their promises to her.

"I lost my family to the Earth, too. My son. But he wouldn't want me to follow him. I know that." He keeps looking at her with those steady, serious eyes. "You've had a hard life. I'm very sorry for that. But you've survived it all - you've survived so much. Don't stop now."

Raven shakes her head, but Jaha is insistent. "How you're hurting right now," he says, "that devastation you feel - don't pass that on to anyone else." When her brow furrows, he explains, "The Blake boy seems quite attached to you."

"Bellamy?" she says, surprised, and then frowns. "He tried to kill you."

He does not waver. "There is a time for forgiveness," he says, and Raven looks away again.

 

 

 

 

 

Jaha leaves the food. Raven eats a bit of it and then falls into a fitful sleep. When she wakes, the camp is quiet and dark. Bellamy is curled around her, one of his hands beneath her shirt. She makes herself listen to him breathe and orders herself not to cry. After a while she makes her peace with the sound, and finds that the rise and fall of his chest matches that of her own.

 

 

 

 

 

Bellamy offers Raven some of his breakfast, like he always does. She accepts, and he smiles, though he tries to hide it a half-second later. Raven's heart vaults up into her throat and it becomes difficult to swallow.

Later, she asks him, "How's Clarke?"

Her voice is soft and Bellamy looks confused for a moment, like he might have misheard her. "Clarke?"

"Yeah."

"She's...she's okay. Sad. Meeting with Lexa most days."

Raven nods slowly. Her messed-up leg is aching. "Will you tell her…" It's a sentence she can't quite finish.

Bellamy shifts closer to her. "Don't be mad, but...I already did."

She blinks. "That was...presumptuous."

He nudges her. "That's my middle name," he says, and then he kisses her.

 

 

 

 

 

She stops crying during the day. She starts eating. She limps around the tent, trying to remember how to walk on her braced leg. She fiddles with the wiring of a burnt out torch. Most mornings, she has sex with Bellamy. Most days, she puts on a fresh set of clothes.

The nights are a different story. She still wakes herself up with her own tears. She has dreams about Finn on the Ark, young and alive, and wakes up breathless and confused, staring at Bellamy's face so close to her own.

"It's okay," he tells her when her confusion melts back into grief. He smooths his hands along her skin. "I'm here."

Eventually, her heartbeat settles and she goes back to sleep. She wakes up in the morning with Bellamy's mouth on her breasts, and after he gets her off, she gets up, and she tries again.

 

 

 

 

 

The truth is that she probably won't ever really be ready to see Clarke. The very thought makes her feel shaky. But she is trying, she is trying so hard, so she tells Bellamy, "Bring her."

When Clarke lifts the flap of the tent, her hands are trembling, just like Raven's. Her hair is messy and she looks very tired.

Bellamy hovers between them, eyes darting from Raven's face to Clarke's, ready to jump in and play peacemaker. Clarke takes slow steps toward Raven and holds out a worn, dirty pouch.

"You should have this," she says. "If you want it."

Raven takes it and finds her blade inside. Tears jump into her eyes so quickly she has no time to fight them off.

Clarke sits down right in front of her and says, on an exhale, "I'm so sorry."

"I know," Raven says, because she does. She knows that Clarke did the best thing she could think of. She knows that Clarke spared Finn a lot of pain and suffering. She knows that Clarke risked her life. She knows that Clarke was in love with Finn.

None of that makes it hurt any less.

"He was very important to you," Clarke says. "I - I understand that."

"All I had," Raven says, more bitterly than she means to.

Clarke reaches out and puts her shaking hands over Raven's, the edges of the blade making indents in their skin. "That's not true," she says very softly, her eyes wet and full. She looks at Bellamy, and then back at Raven. "You have us."

Raven bows her head, tears dripping onto the reflective surface of the knife. Her chest aches. She can feel, in the air between them, how much Clarke wants to hug her.

"You can't hate each other forever," Bellamy says into the silence, almost teasing. "We'll all be screwed."

Raven looks up. "I don't hate you," she says, and it's Clarke's turn to say, "I know."

 

 

 

 

 

Two weeks and one day after Finn's death, Raven emerges from Bellamy's tent in the middle of the day. The sun is bright in her eyes and she's a little unsteady on her feet. People look at her and then away quickly, showing her a kindness by pretending that her emergence from the tent isn't a major event.

She breathes in deeply, for herself and for Finn. She looks around as her eyes adjust to the light and eventually her gaze settles on Bellamy, who is standing several feet away and smiling at her in a stupid way. She frowns, which only makes him beam a little more as he walks toward her.

"Okay, Reyes?" he calls.

She nods. She breathes.

"I'm here," she says.

 


End file.
